Crowd sourcing

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Crowd sourcing

Among the most exciting sessions at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2010 were the prizes being distributed for people who had written stories in an innovative way, including the concept of a crowd writing a story.

Two features struck me about the prizewinners:

	the first was the way graphics and images were introduced alongside the words.
	the second was the very fast moving nature of the narrative. The story covers one simple episode, so is comparable to the short story genre, but on a canvas that was wider because images were introduced.

It was interesting to see how the visual element was integrated to supplement the written word. Where the soundtrack was provided, the narrative was never carried by a narrator; the sound just stretched the mental images being created by the written words. (This might have been one of the rules of the competition which excluded audio books).

All of these stories seem to have been pitched for the small screen of the mobile phone.

This was an interesting challenge and one that really begins to explore the new formats available. The idea of turning a blog into a story is not original but the idea of bloggers getting together to co-operate on the story did seem to be original, combining the contributions, whether they are art work, a soundscape, or a few words, which are brought together by an editor: Or is the editor really the author?

A few years ago, some top mathematicians inspired by Timothy Gowers, had to address this problem when they collectively set and then solved a serious problem. When it came to publication, the collective called itself ‘Polymath’ with a link to the blog threads where the creative contributions of the individuals could be studied.

Crowd sourcing did promote some exciting developments, if Frankfurt provides an insight; so watch this space. http://www.jovoto.com/